This intimate documentary chronicles five years in the life of a young Chinese student, whose fervent idealism and dedication to Mao’s legacy stands in stark contrast to contemporary China’s turn towards state capitalism.

A Young Patriot

Haibin Du

Year

2015

Runtime

106 min

Language

Mandarin, dialects of Mandarin

Country

France, United States, China

China may have embraced capitalism, but
that doesn't mean Maoism has vanished. In
A Young Patriot, we get an eye-opening take
on China's millennial generation through the
perspective of an idealistic and likable young
man named Zhao Chantong, who feels a special
kinship to Mao's legacy. Starting when
Zhao is nineteen years old, the film follows
him for five years as he passes through the
crucibles of young adulthood — finding a
purpose, making friends, seeking employment
— against the backdrop of China's
shifting ideologies.

Director Du Haibin gains intimate access
to Zhao, his friends, and his family, carefully
observing how their relationships evolve
over time. Zhao was born the year after the
1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square.
But those events are more remote to him
than the legends of the Red Guard, whose
patriotic anthems he sings with gusto.

We journey from a remote village in
Shanxi province, where Zhao and his
comrades have gone to indoctrinate a
new generation of patriots, to his university
in Chengdu, where he encounters
challenging ideas about the future of modern
China. Through Zhao's coming of age, we bear
witness to the country's changing patterns of
development, consumption, and pollution.

Zhao doesn't want the Chinese Communist
Party to collapse after only sixty
years, but neither can he stomach the rampant
corruption that's rooted in the system.
A Young Patriot is a powerful entry point
into the history of a nation that, in the eyes
of Zhao, has reached a precipice.